Rule of thumb to select a JS frontend framework

This is the condensed version of my experience with JS frameworks from working on multiple different web apps built with different frameworks in the past 4-5 years:

Forget Angular if you are not willing to obey a strict set of opinionated ways of doing things, a number of sciencey approaches that sound really too complicated for the output it produces, dealing with build issues based on unstable tooling and instead, go for something like VueJS or generally with something that doesn’t encapsulate your way of thinking like Angular does. Maybe even React, but I don’t like Google nor Facebook, so .. 😉

For UI components, you can plug Quasar on top of VueJS to end up with an Ionic alternative. It’s not as mature, but taking into account that VueJS is much simpler to get started with and is a lot less dogmatised than Angular, you will be a lot more productive.

If you only need to add a bit of interactivity to a HTML form, use jQuery and don’t even think about setting up an MVVM(like) framework with all the moving parts and build procedures and thousands of npm modules.

I witnessed countless discussions circling around React VS Angular VS VueJS VS Knockout VS .. too many, I think. So many, that I actually think most developers get caught up in a technolgy discussion that has nothing to do with solving the actual problem of the client or the product they’re developing.